


If You Don't Believe (The Sun Will Rise)

by echoist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5.04-verse, Awkward Sexual Situations, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-03
Updated: 2010-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:39:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoist/pseuds/echoist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Cas making do in an earlier portion of the 5.04-verse, about three months after Detroit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Don't Believe (The Sun Will Rise)

 

 

                Dean checked the windows one last time, drawing every curtain shut against the stagnant dark.  They were thin and decorative, embroidered with wildflowers and someone’s hand-stitched initials.  Useless, he judged; the sort that blocked only a fraction of the light during the day, and couldn’t be counted on to retain any heat at night.  The dog that had been snuffling about the kitchen door had moved on with no sign of an owner behind, and Dean felt that they might finally be safe for what remained of the night. 

                He pulled his jacket tighter around his chest and rubbed at his hands, ticking items off a mental list.  The farmhouse had a fireplace, large and bounded with field stones, connecting the industrial-sized kitchen to the living room, but Dean knew better than to kindle a fire for warmth.  Even if he could have found enough dry wood by moonlight, the flickering flames would shine out like a beacon across acres of rotting wheat.  You never knew who, or _what_, might be lurking in the midwinter dark, watching. 

                Smears of old blood, long-dried,  stained the creaking floorboards, and Dean wondered idly how long the ranch had sat empty.  Three months?  Six?  It had been difficult to tell, without any bodies left behind, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what the Croats had done with them – or to them.  Cold-addled flies still buzzed halfheartedly around the sink; one lone beetle followed a dark path through the house as if on rails.  They’d found two wooden lockers full of time-softened quilts – _hope chests_, he thought, wondering who he’d ever known to call them that.  Blankets would keep them warm enough, but hope had been in short supply since the virus broke, and the world along with it.  

                Heading up the stairs, Dean pulled a pair of sweat pants out of a faded blue Wal-Mart bag, ripping off the tag still advertising their last sale.  He’d never had much compunction about stealing in the world Before, and he really couldn’t be bothered to start caring now.  Besides, he’d shot four Croats to get to the men’s section; Dean couldn’t help but feel as though he’d earned a few replacements in his wardrobe.  He’d even managed to grab a few things for Cas – a sturdy pair of jeans, and some warm flannel shirts that didn’t require a tie.  He still insisted on wearing the ill-fitting trench coat, but Dean would take each small victory he could get.

                Castiel had dragged a twin-sized bed that must have belonged to a child into the largest room at the end of the upstairs hallway.  A teddy bear and some sour-faced donkey thing cavorted across the sheets in the glow from a shielded pen-light, their once-vibrant colors nearly washed into oblivion.  It sat perpendicular to a rickety double bed shoved back into one corner, the headboard cracked in several places.  Dean glanced at a wad of mottled sheets discarded on the rug.  “They were –“ Castiel began in explanation, arm resting on the windowsill, forehead pressed against the frosty glass.  “There was blood,” he finished, and Dean clasped his shoulder as he moved past into the room. 

                “S’all right,” he muttered, surveying the make-shift bunker in what little moonlight seeped in through the shadows.  “I’ll take that one.”  The bedroom was on the second storey, reducing the likelihood of a perimeter breach by virtue of elevation, and the long hallway would give them plenty of time to respond to any intruders on the lower level.  He closed the door and wedged a bedside table beneath the knob, scratching the wooden beams.  Turning off the tiny flashlight with a click, Dean plunged them into darkness and stifled a yawn. 

                Slipping out of jeans stiff with caked-on grime, he replaced them with the new pair of sweats.  It was a compromise he could afford to make; not quite as comfortable to sleep in as boxers, but if they were discovered in the night, he could still take a dive out the window and make a run for the car without his junk hanging out for all to see (or worse).  He threw two quilts on the bed to cover the dark stains on the sagging mattress and burrowed beneath the top layer, ensuring that both his shotgun and a bowie knife were in arm’s reach. 

                “I think I will take this opportunity to wash,” Castiel said, heading into the closet-sized bath attached to the room.  If it was still strange, six months later, to hear the former angel discuss such human concepts as hygiene, hunger, and weariness, Dean knew it had to be exponentially more difficult for Cas himself to think about them. 

                He’d realized the angel was drifting closer to human about a month after Detroit; after his little brother, by all reports, had given in to the Devil.  He’d teleported himself (and Dean) to the middle of an interstate, the middle of the wrong city, and far too often, the middle of nowhere.  The accidental trip to a rooftop in the ruins of St. Petersburg had been a welcome change of scenery, but they were supposed to be following a lead in Saint Paul.  He could still see the sunset over Tampa Bay, still hear the surf on the rocks below.  It was a chill autumn day at the beach, but it beat the pants off a blizzard in Minnesota, and he’d made the mistake of thanking the angel for the field trip.

                Must’ve been two months ago, now.  Dean remembered the way the dying light lit Castiel’s face as he stepped back from the edge of the roof and looked to him in utter confusion.  Cas had never tried to teleport them anywhere again.  All things considered, Dean thought, deciding to take a shower all on his own was a clear indicator of progress.   “Go for it, buddy,” Dean yawned sleepily; the prospect of a cold shower in complete darkness held absolutely no appeal when sleep could be had instead.

 

 

                Some time later, Dean awoke with a start, his hand on the hilt of the knife beneath his pillow.  “It’s just me,” Castiel whispered, rearranging the blankets.  “I was – that is, it’s – I’m cold.  Your bed is warmer.” 

                “Mmph,” Dean muttered, sliding the knife back inside the pillowcase.  “What’vr.”  If he’d ever minded Castiel’s presence at his back while he slept, Dean had long since gotten used to it.  It was rare to come across a defensible location with actual beds, much less two of them.  Tool sheds crawling with spiders, tobacco barns with dirt floors and feral cats, or hotels rotting from the inside out; these were their usual choices for shelter.  Packs of Croats staked out the nicer abandoned neighborhoods; posted a watch at high rise apartments.  Forget hiding out in a sporting goods supply or home improvement store – you’d be dead or converted long before you could regret the choice. 

                A place like this was a real find.  Dean toyed with the idea of staying for nearly thirty seconds before drifting back to sleep.

 

 

                Later, much later, when the first blue hints of dawn had crept through the curtains to cast thick shadows across the floor, Dean woke again.  The bed was moving, shaking ever so slightly, as the angel – former angel, Dean reminded himself – slid against him, hand braced against his arm.  His erection pressed hard and slick against the small of Dean’s back, still covered by a tight stretch of cotton.  Dean breathed slowly, steadily, wondering how long he could pretend to be asleep while he figured this one out. 

                He hadn’t known, honestly, how far Castiel’s merger with his human vessel would extend.  He’d noticed when Cas had started sweating, noticed when his appetite had picked up, and in turn, used his confusion over the process of bodily waste as endless fodder for bathroom humor.  Dean had poked and prodded, even tickled once (though the black eye that had earned him ensured he’d never try it again), but had never felt like he had the right to ask about _this_.  This was warm and wet and unexpectedly arousing and when Castiel’s breath hitched, twice, Dean wondered why all the air had left the room. 

                “Don’t wake up,” Cas whispered, softly, heavily, dragging his hips forward and up and back.  If Dean hadn’t been straining to hear every sound in the pre-dawn chill, he would have missed it entirely.  “Please, I’m just – I’m almost – ah –“

                Dean hadn’t gotten laid in months.  Not since his brother wiped Detroit off the map; longer, maybe, since grief had bled in through all the corners of his life and left only the smallest window to see through.  He knew what any shrink worth their salt would have to say, if he had been inclined to talk, then wondered at the expression.  Sam had explained to him once that salt had been the basis for a whole economy – way back, like The Mummy or Clash of the Titans back, but he hadn’t really bought it.  Salt was at once the only indispensable weapon in his arsenal and literally cheaper than dirt.  Dean supposed talk was much the same, but he couldn’t afford both.

                The bed shifted, back, and forth, Castiel’s hand shaking as his thumb traced circles on Dean’s sleeve.  The skin beneath still bore the imprint of the angel’s hand – and _yes_, Dean thought, angel still, even if trapped and bound in a human frame, he was still _Cas_ and that meant nothing like human – skin as sensitive as the day he’d woken up underground and he nearly shivered at the unrelenting strokes.  He’d never told anyone, least of all Cas, but Dean had always felt like that mark meant something, kept him bound to something greater than all the lies and manipulations and outright bullshit the angel’s old buddies had brought down on him.  Even when he’d hated the bastard for being cold and distant and – later, most unforgivably – _afraid_, he’d never once wished it wasn’t there. 

                Castiel’s fingers pressed down, just a breath of contact across heat-smoothed skin with a hiss of air between his teeth and Dean gave up the ghost.  The world was ending, maybe already over.  Everyone that wasn’t yet (mercifully) dead was praying for it to be quick.  There was no one left to mind where he took his comfort; no one to embarrass with his lack of scruples.  No one to remind him where lines should be drawn.  He moved his left hand to cover Castiel’s where it rested over the brand, wrapped his fingers around the angel’s wrist as Cas pulled away, startled.  His hips stopped moving and Dean slid back along the mattress until their bodies met.

                “Dean,” Castiel whispered, sounding horrified, confused, but still in need.  “I’m sor –“

                They didn’t have time for apologies.  Dean pulled the angel’s hand forward and down across his torso in slow motion, grip slack, giving Cas the chance to reconsider.  He’d embarrassed his friend enough just by waking up; Dean wasn’t about to involve him in something he didn’t really want.  Cas let out a breath as his fingers trailed across Dean’s stomach, muscles of his forearms loose and unresisting.  Dean hesitated a moment more, pushing down the front of his sweats before wrapping the angel’s hand around his cock.

                He was already hard, but the feel of someone else’s skin against his erection only added to his arousal.  Dean made a sound low in his throat, thrusting his hips slowly forward and back, his cock sliding in and out of the angel’s palm.  He hadn’t expected to want this so much, to need it enough to take what the angel hadn’t known how to offer.  Castiel’s hand tightened around him, squeezing gently and in rhythm to Dean’s short, desperate thrusts.  His worries, his fears for the future faded to static as friction enveloped him and pushed him to the edge.  Dean guided the angel’s movements, arching back against his chest as the pressure built and built and finally spilled over, warm and sticky in their hands.

                “Oh,” the angel whispered, more like a breath he hadn’t meant to let escape, and then, “_Dean,”_ hot and needy and dangerously close to begging.  When the supernova faded behind his eyes, Dean shifted, rolling over to face the angel, _his _angel, hand resting on Castiel’s neck just below his jaw.  His eyes were shut, lips pressed thin as his hips sought contact in the dark.  Dean slid his fingers down to lift the edge of the soft white undershirt he’d convinced the angel to wear in lieu of the filthy, starched Oxford, certain it had been an improvement.  He ran his hands across Castiel’s abdomen, wondering about the other man who had once lived inside this skin.  He’d never admitted the shamed relief he’d felt when Jimmy moved on, no longer a passenger in an angel-driven vessel, no longer a restless spirit eavesdropping on the Apocalypse.  Never spoken aloud how much he’d wanted to look into this man’s eyes and see only Castiel.

                It made what happened next so much easier. 

                His hand drifted down, slipped beneath the smooth elastic band of the boxers Dean had picked out to replace the cock-throttling briefs Jimmy had apparently preferred.  He remembered the tightness in his throat when Castiel had emerged from the bathroom with slow, hesitant steps, asking if he had “equipped them” properly.  _You got it_, he’d answered, coughing slightly as he turned away.  It had taken far too long to stifle the mess of  inarticulate thoughts centered on the point where his torso met his hips, just above the waistband.  Bobby had called to interrupt his staring with a heads up on a pack of vamps moving through their sector, a mob of Croats hot on their heels.  The only thing worse than an angry vampire was a desperate one, and they had packed up their gear and run.  Dean wondered, now, what might have happened if he had let the call go to voicemail.

                “No one’s ever done this for you before,” Dean observed, not even a question because he _knew_.  His one, good-intentioned attempt to get the angel laid had failed, spectacularly, and Dean was beginning to understand why.  His thumb brushed the head of Castiel’s cock, slick and quivering, on his way to wrap around the shaft and stroke, gently, again and again.   “Relax,” he added, twisting his hand as it rose and fell. 

                “That isn’t possible,” the angel gasped.  “You’re – ah – _Dean _– “  His face was pointed up to the ceiling, eyes shut, veins tight and throbbing in his neck.  Dean leaned in, loosening his grip below the waist as his lips pressed soft against the angel’s throat.  “That’s right,” he murmured, caressing, tugging, encouraging, “it’s just me.  I’ve got you, Cas,” and the angel’s inarticulate sigh was better than any words Dean knew.  His thumb slid slick against the swollen glans, brushed up and under from beneath along the thin line of tissue stretched taut and felt Castiel shudder at the tease.  Pulling away, Dean maneuvered his left arm out from beneath the pillow and took the angel’s chin in his hand, guiding it back down.

                “Look at me,” he breathed, quickening his strokes.  Castiel opened his eyes and Dean watched the pleasure bloom like fire there, his pupils blown by the orgasm wracking his nerves as lightning.  He didn’t make a sound, didn’t even breathe and Dean pulled him close to press his lips against the angel’s mouth.  His tongue moved, gently, lightly finding the path inside and as the aftershocks began, rolling across his boneless frame, Castiel returned the kiss with interest.

                Tiny, rapidly cooling streams ran down the mattress to pool beneath them and Dean wondered, idly, if Cas would mind.  Propping himself up on one elbow, he shrugged out of his t-shirt and mopped at the fluid soaking the angel’s chest, eventually giving up and just tugging the entire shirt over Castiel’s head.  The front of his boxers was wet and Dean slipped them off, laughing when the material tangled in the angel’s feet. 

                “Think you’ll get cold again?” Dean asked, wondering if he should go dig through the bags for a fresh change of clothes.  Cas made a quiet sound and wrapped one arm about Dean’s waist, holding him close as if to say, _you’re warm enough_ or maybe just _don’t leave_.  Dean threaded one leg through both of his, wrapping his foot around the angel’s ankle in agreement.  His hand drifted up, tracing lazy patterns across Castiel’s back and came to rest where a wing might once have been. 

               Cas sighed, forehead pressed against Dean’s shoulder, and Dean wondered selfishly if this – whatever _this _was - could ever make up for a loss beyond his understanding.  He wanted to think it would be enough, but a painstakingly thorough education in doubt warned him otherwise.  He couldn’t think about tomorrow, couldn’t even think about today, or what awaited them once the cold winter sun had burned away the haze.  For now, Dean decided, he wouldn’t think at all. 

               The world was over, yes, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t make another in the ruins.  Castiel’s awkward breathing slowed towards sleep, and Dean waited, watching the sun rise, pale over skeletal trees. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Audioslave's "[The Last Remaining Light](http://tinyurl.com/8w2tre)." While I was writing, I also had J. Tillman's "When I Light Your Darkened Door" on repeat. YMMV.


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